Yesterday, we could say Giannis is the Milwaukee Bucks.
Today, we must say Giannis was the Milwaukee Bucks.
It’s the biggest tense change in Milwaukee basketball history. One different word. A whole different world.
To acknowledge there will never be another like him is not nearly acknowledging enough. Yes, the Bucks will be good again someday. They will, eventually, find another star, and he might even make them may NBA champions again. But never like Giannis did. There’s a reason Disney made his story into a movie.
He came to Milwaukee a manchild, rooted in the humblest of beginnings. And we met him and his family and watched him grow into a man. Then into an All-Star. Then an MVP. Then a champion and a worldwide brand.
And yet, despite the ever-growing fame and fortune, he always seemed to remain one of Milwaukee’s own, because he gave us story after story and joy after joy. The discovery of smoothies. Strangers giving him a winter ride to practice. The philosophical press conferences. The defiant stare into the camera after the Valley Oop. The 50 chicken nuggets. The emphatic statements, time and again, amid endless contract and trade rumors, that “This is my city.”
Tell us who you’d pick to be a Betty this year!
Here was a man who put Milwaukee on the global map, and the Milwaukee skyline on his shoe line. Here was the rare star who, by all accounts, loved Milwaukee as much as it loved him.
And now? Well, now he’s gone.
The armchair GMs will forever debate it. Whether the Bucks should’ve traded him. Whether they had no choice but to trade him. Whether they got enough value. Whether he would’ve stayed. And the endless what-ifs that led up to, and will inevitably result from, the trade.
Maybe it was the injuries. Maybe he’d grown too big for Milwaukee. Maybe it was the changes among ownership and personnel. Maybe he had too much power. Maybe the Bucks, after so many years of trying, simply could no longer match his ambition. Maybe it’s everyone’s fault and nobody’s fault. Maybe someday we’ll find out. Maybe we never will.
In the end, it’s all fruitless fodder for sports talk and social media. Because when relationships end, as any marriage counselor will tell you, there’s never one reason, but so, so many. And this is, at its core, the end of not just one relationship, but multiple ones. Between the Bucks and Giannis. Between Giannis and his Bucks fans. Between a basketball legend and Milwaukee and the dream that he’d never leave.
And now that he’s left, let the record reflect that Milwaukee’s return for one of the best to ever play the game is this: Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jacquez Jr. and Kasparas Jakucionis, as well as three first-round draft picks and another second-round pick.
It is, of course, not enough, which is no disrespect to the new and future Bucks. Because nothing realistic could possibly have been enough, neither for the on-court ability nor what he’s meant to the community.
Because you can’t trade for memories.
But at least we’ll always have them.
